How do you make up for the 2 months you decided not to eat out and cooked home instead? I live in Boston, and some of my favorite restaurants are already closed, and the huge liqueur store next to my house closed this week. It's not possible to make up for things like this, they're gonna be replaced by larger food chains once virus passes. But it's not true to say virus didn't hurt our economy permanently, of course, one can argue in 6 months time the degree in which we're hurt might be minor.
I never said businesses will come back from grave. But people will want to get out once this passes. I'm personally sick of staying at home, I am going to try to make better use of my time. Somebody will get that business anyway.
I am also putting off repairing my car until after all this passes. Yes, car repair shops may be at loss now because I decided not to do business with them, but my car is still broken and I will probably have to pay premium to get my favorite mechanic to take a look.
This is "economy" we are talking about. It is an average over a lot of individual cases. It does not care that a lot of companies will die if the ones that survive get more business.
I think folks are underestimating how long this will go on. At least until the end of the year, minimum. There is absolutely nowhere near the amount of testing being done in the USA due to incompetence, that is needed to allow folks to feel safe, or to safely allow bars / concert venues or other large gatherings to happen. Massive amounts of businesses are never coming back from that.
We're a massively long way from that, plus the contrarian ignorance embedded in GOP politics now that are allowing / half demanding their cities open back up for business are going to all but ensure the USA has the biggest death / infection / economic hit of all of the countries in the world.
shelter in place is besides the point. People are not gonna go to bars and behave like nothing is happening if their loved ones are sick and getting killed. I'm 22 yo, healthy, no comorbid condition, but I for sure will not be as active as I was before COVID. I'll definitely go out, but I doubt I'll be going to concerts. I doubt I'll eat out every day. It'll definitely have some impact on the economy.
The issue with the broader economy is the number of professional organizations that are now doing layoffs, on a broad scale those jobs are slower to come back then the retail and service industry jobs that were initially lost. Those people won't be spending money as a result, and there will be further slowdown.
